by David Head, Rallyist
Rallymaster Jim Wakeman with Chair Jim Miner and Prechecker/Safety Steward Clyde Heckler gave us the March 24thand 25thrunning of the March Lion National Course Rally and the March Lamb National Tour Rally in honor of Bob Jumper, Dave Teter, and Mark Haas who have all passed. I never met Mr. Jumper, but miss both Dave and Mark every time I think of things rally. Dave and I spent many years running National and Divisional Course and Tour rallies, winning the National Tour Championship in 2006, 2009, and 2010, while having great fun. May the three honorees rest in peace.
March Lion wasn’t as wickedly difficult as the Desert Sands rally just 3 weeks prior, but it wasn’t easy. Along with a lot of rules about LRIs and overlap and a really busy way of determining the main road, it included my second most hated rally trap, the Aristotle. For those not familiar, an Aristotle prohibits two similar consecutive actions from being acted upon at the same point. That’s vague enough to cover most every case, but specifically, contestants were not to execute two consecutively numbered route instructions (NRIs) at the same intersection.
To go into Aristotles a little, there are many ways to construct them, with Lion’s being one of the less busy, although not the least. It could have been constructed to prohibit the execution of a specified action of two consecutive NRIs at the same intersection which would have been a little easier. But, by saying “executions of” rather than “specified actions of”, that opened the implied actions of the NRI to be Aristotled as well. So, if the instruction said, “Left after third sideroad,” each sideroad you count, as well as whatever intersection you turn at, are executions of that NRI, so you can’t do any executions of the subsequent NRI at any of them. If the subsequent NRI has multiple execution points, well, it is even more gnarly.
However, for our effort, Chuck Hanson and I did blow the Aristotle, but that was a minor thing compared to everything else.
We did the first trap right, a simple priority trap of NRI vs LRI execution. Fine. Good score.
We did the 2ndtrap right, too, a follow Cannon Ridge Rd where the onto instruction was executed in the odo leg. Tricky. However, thanks to a weekend of perfect time rallies in Arizona, I reverted to adding the car number to our out time without thinking sufficiently about it, we got there on time except several whole minutes late, and got a max.
From there, things went downhill. We misinterpreted some things, missed a turn, got totally lost, missed a DIYC also, and arrived at the subsequent open control with 2 consecutive maxes for the DIY leg that we got lost on plus the one after that. The missed turn on the DIY leg had a course that put contestants “onto” another road. Since we missed that turn, we missed the “onto” and so were not looking for the road that was encountered much later in the rally and got a max from that too. Making it more difficult was the 11.5 minute delay we needed to recover from our missed turn, got into the morning break and thought we would recover some time, didn’t even stop to enter the gas station for food or comfort, and arrived at the next start point needing a 14.5 minute delay just to restart. Others said that there was basically no time built into that break, so it wasn’t all us.
The mechanism for determining the main road caused us some brain freeze. Doing it over and over again at each intersection seemed to become impossible to get right after a while, like a muscle that has been over-exercised and will just barely lift your leg any more. To determine the main road, you had to consider every main road rule on it to determine the highest main road that didn’t go in the same direction as one that was lower on the list. Very busy, and very brain freeze. I think we turned around about 5 times in 1 leg after misinterpreting it, managing to pause at 3 intersections for it when we should have only paused at one. It wasn’t Desert Sands tough, but it was tough.
Bob Morseburg and Bruce Gezon won class E with a clean, sub-50-point-max run of 29. Jack von Kaenel and Stu Helfer were 2ndin E with 1 max and 91 points. Third was Steve Gaddy and Chris Bean with 103 points, although they had no actual maxes and appear to just have timing anomalies for their penalties. No one participated in class L, and Jeff Boris and Brian Nogrady took S class with 512.
The March Lamb was, blessedly, a tour with no problems in following the course. NRI’s were clear, there weren’t any questions about where to do what, and your task as a contestant was to put the car across the checkpoint in-line when you were supposed to.
The rally was well-measured, the clocks all seemed to be “on”, so the rally got by those hurdles that sometimes trip up other organizing committees.
What was remarkable was the built-in stops for viewing historic sites. Did you know, that besides the folks in Boston throwing British tea in the harbor, other folks in other areas burned it. We were treated first to a monument to the Cumberland County Teaburners. That’s right, people got together and burned the tea. It was a nice break in the usual continuous action of a tour rally, with an opportunity to get out and walk around, while reading signs relating the history of the event.
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Next up was the Hancock House, that was headquarters for the Colonial Militia guarding Hancock Bridge, a key transportation route for the revolutionary war. The house was the site of what is termed the Hancock Massacre, where Loyalist Militia killed some 20 Colonial Militia, shouting “Spare no one” and “Give no quarter.” We were fortunate enough to visit when re-enactors were giving a demonstration of militia tactics and the mechanics and firing of flintlock rifles. You don’t get things like this on just every SCCA National Tour Rally.
Next stop was the Old Pittsgrove Presbyterian Church, built in 1767 and nicely restored for history. There isn’t much to say about the church, other than it is fairly impressive inside and out, and again a nice diversion from the intensity of tour rallying. It was another great subject for people’s cameras.
Jack von Kaenel and Stu Helfer won class E with a pretty emphatic 5 points, followed by Jim Crittenden and Ann Olwenik in 2ndwith 7 points. Class L was won by Satish Gopalkrishnan and Navin Ohri as the only entry in class, posting a 66 point day. Class S went to Eli and J Toney with 59 points, over Edward and Douglas Sain with 184 points.
It was a great weekend for a pair of rallies that were threatened by a big snow the previous Wednesday, having all involved wondering if the rallies would actually run. Ice brought down wires and wood onto the roads that cause the rerouting or cancelation of several legs in the Lion, plus a small deviation in the Lamb. This is a weekend to come back to if the rallies stay up to this level of enjoyment next year.
